{"id":2998,"date":"2017-03-28T08:30:46","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T08:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.anychart.com\/blog\/?p=2998"},"modified":"2017-03-28T09:37:42","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T09:37:42","slug":"dashboard-design-trends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anychart.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/28\/dashboard-design-trends\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Dashboard Design Trends for 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dashboard<\/a>With the explosion\u00a0of data in the past few years, the relevance of understanding it better\u00a0has grown to the highest\u00a0extent. That is why\u00a0expertise in interactive charting and dashboard design, as well as in the whole\u00a0big Data Visualization and Data Science fields in general, has become so important nowadays. In fact, it is usually rather difficult to understand raw data as deeply and quickly as needed. Luckily, neat\u00a0visual representation of information can be helpful in\u00a0clarifying even very large amounts of data, discovering and exploring patterns in data, and then making (right) data-driven decisions.<\/p>\n

Creating dashboards<\/a> is\u00a0a\u00a0great way\u00a0of transforming\u00a0diverse relevant data into informative, insightful visualizations as the basis for\u00a0further analysis. In order to obtain the\u00a0highest possible efficiency, they\u00a0should\u00a0be insightful, featuring robust usability, and visually (and aesthetically) appealing.<\/p>\n

Today we’ll talk about the most notable dashboard\u00a0design trends. Understanding them is very important to each\u00a0data professional who wants to further improve their skills by keeping up with the times and adhering to the best practices.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Revealing Trends in Dashboard Design<\/h2>\n

Cross-Platform Dashboards\u00a0Based on Responsive Design Principles<\/h3>\n

\"Responsive<\/a><\/p>\n

Nowadays, the abundance of portable devices with constant connection to the Internet enables complete\u00a0mobilization<\/em> of people and operations. Many people\u00a0can easily take their work home,\u00a0analyze data remotely, or explore data visualizations on their cell phones, tablets, and so on in multiple\u00a0other situations. And dashboards have\u00a0to adapt to this trend.<\/p>\n

Whether it’s the small screen\u00a0of smartphones or\u00a0tablets, or the large screen of PC computers\u00a0and video walls, dashboards now should\u00a0provide the same great experience on all kinds of displays and platforms. Responsive dashboard design is a great\u00a0way\u00a0to keep the\u00a0completeness,\u00a0accuracy and insightfulness of a data report across\u00a0all mobile and desktop devices.<\/p>\n

Interactive Dashboard Design as Top-Notch Feature<\/h3>\n

A\u00a0static presentation, fixed charts and monolith reports are currently\u00a0considered a bad dashboard design model.\u00a0In fact, the days when this was acceptable are long gone.<\/p>\n

Instead, it’s an\u00a0interactive dashboard that can improve viewers’ engagement and provide a\u00a0beneficial\u00a0user experience via intuitive controls and visual features. Tooltips<\/a> that pop up when a data point is hovered<\/a> over with the mouse, range selection<\/a> interfaces, exclude\/include data point<\/a>\u00a0options, etc. \u2013 all these enable a much more comprehensive and insightful data analysis.\u00a0That is why such features are\u00a0now more and more widespread in top\u00a0dashboard design practices.<\/p>\n

To get a better idea of what the world would look like if we did not have\u00a0interactivity,\u00a0take a look at the following simple example of a stacked column (vertical bar)\u00a0chart<\/a> from a sample HR dashboard<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Stacked<\/p>\n

Well, it looks helpful\u00a0to identify the tallest and smallest total columns overall. But what if we now want to dig into more details? That is hardly possible with that chart but can be easily fixed with the help of the range selection UI controls, not to mention tooltips with additional information. For example:<\/p>\n

\"Interactivity<\/p>\n

This is just a very basic example of how interactivity<\/a> and various corresponding features\u00a0can be helpful in dashboard design.<\/p>\n

Updates from Live Data Sources in Real Time<\/h3>\n

\"Real-Time<\/a><\/p>\n

New data is being produced nonstop. Just look at this: 90% of the existing data are reported to have emerged\u00a0for only\u00a0the last two years, and, for example, 204 million emails are being sent every minute. These facts\u00a0clearly demonstrate\u00a0the gargantuan rate of continuous growth of the aggregate volume\u00a0of data out there. Moreover, data quickly\u00a0loses its relevance, and even one-day-old figure\u00a0can already be irrelevant in a number of cases.\u00a0As a result, people\u00a0more and more often\u00a0need to analyze large amounts of data and\/or conduct analysis in real time.<\/p>\n

Visualizing\u00a0large data sets and even big data as well as building real-time visualizations require excellent performance<\/a> from\u00a0an appropriate dashboarding\u00a0solution in addition to its ability to constantly update information once it’s changed in the data source. So be careful when, for example, choosing a JavaScript charting library<\/a> as not all the data visualization software\u00a0is a good fit in these terms.<\/p>\n

Use of Maps for Geovisualization in Dashboards<\/h3>\n

\"US<\/a><\/p>\n

Volume of geospatial\u00a0data is growing in line with the data overall. So, today it is pretty common to see\u00a0map based interactive geovisualizations\u00a0on various dashboards. There are multiple chart types of that kind, specifically designed for providing a help with analyzing geospatial, location-related data. The most widespread ones are:<\/p>\n